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Possible New Social Feature in iOS

"Find My Friends" has been located within the iOS 5 beta. According to Appleinsider, this could be a prelude to location-based social network. Otherwise, seriously, why else the need to stalk your friends or be stalked.

What isn't know is if this will be extensive and how much of this will be available to third parties. And if so, will be supplant other services? Take Foursquare for instance. Will FS be forced to access only certain location data from Apple's service so that users have greater control over what developers know about them and where they are or have been?

Apple just recently told developers that the individual unique codes of devices will no longer be available to them.

Apple essentially will use iCloud as the launching pad to other social services. If you do a simple search for keywords in this regard, you'll see that Apple has a few patents on location, messaging, and social patents.

Just as with the app store, Apple will eventually become a gatekeeper of its user's information.